Italy bowl Tanzania out with spin, and in December they will play their first official ODIs
An eight-wicket win in Dar es Salaam put Italy top of Challenge League B. The reward is a place at the World Cup Qualifier Play-off, where every match carries ODI status.
Aug 19, 2026
Tanzania were 87 for 1 in Dar es Salaam on Tuesday, batting comfortably, with Italy needing the win to top their group. Italy’s spinners then took all ten wickets, the last nine of them for 55 runs, and by the end of the afternoon Italy had qualified for a tournament that will give them the first official men’s one-day internationals in their history.
Ten wickets between the spinners
Akash Waduwalage finished with 5 for 21 and Crishan Kalugamage took 3 for 28 as Tanzania were bowled out for 142. Dhrumit Mehta top-scored with 39. Nine wickets for 55 runs after a first-wicket stand that had taken Tanzania to 87 in the 15th over is the sort of collapse that decides a league.
Italy needed 26 overs. Justin Mosca made 52 and his brother AJ finished unbeaten on 75 from 71 balls, the two of them putting on 121 for the first wicket, and captain Harry Manenti was there at the end on 8 not out to finish an eight-wicket win.
That result confirmed Italy at the top of ICC Men’s Cricket World Cup Challenge League B, with 26 points from 15 matches, one defeat all campaign, and a net run rate of 2.152 that no other side in the group came near. Uganda finished second on 22 points and go through with them.
What they have actually won
The prize is a place in the Cricket World Cup Qualifier Play-off, pencilled in for 1 to 22 December this year. Eight teams will be there: the bottom four from Cricket World Cup League 2 and four from the Challenge Leagues, with Jersey and Kuwait currently leading Challenge League A and one leg still to play.
Every match at that tournament carries ODI status. Italy played their first men’s international against Denmark in July 1989 and have never once had a fixture the ICC counts as an ODI. In December they will play several inside three weeks.
The top four in that play-off move on to the World Cup Qualifier proper, a ten-team event running from 22 February to 23 March 2027, and four teams from there reach the World Cup itself, which South Africa, Zimbabwe and Namibia host from 4 October to 21 November 2027.
Where Italy have come from
This is a side that had never played at any senior World Cup until this year, when they qualified for the T20 World Cup as runners-up in the 2025 Europe Regional Final. They went out in the group stage with one win from four, losing to Scotland, England and West Indies and beating Nepal.
The route they are on now is the long one: December, then February, then a qualifier inside a qualifier, with the World Cup still two rounds beyond that. They will not be favourites in any of it. But a side that lost one match in a 15-game league and bowled a team out with spin on a foreign ground has earned the right to be taken seriously in December.